Here there be dragons...

"I'm telling you stories. Trust me." - Winterson

Midnight Musings

My husband is snoring and my mind is spinning.  There's not too much I can do about the first issue, but writing generally helps calm the hamster, so here goes :)

Consider yourself forewarned - I  downloaded a blogger ap and am thumb typing this on my phone; I guarantee nothing.

I haven't quite figured out why it's exponentially more difficult to move two people than one, but it most definitely is.  I had tentatively booked the week off work, fully planning to actually work both Thursday and Friday.  Yeah.  That's not happening.

However, we are in the Burlington house.  Woohoo!  We did the final walk through of the Paris house this afternoon; the new buyer gets it tomorrow.      It's been a busy week, but overall all good.  I'm typing this lying on the couch in front of our fireplace -- all kinds of civilized.  

So the day we got the house had an ice storm. Who's surprised by this?  I thought not; you're not new here.
One day I will move during nice weather;
Today is not that day.
What it did highlight for me though was how very unfit I am compared to when I had the school *sigh*.  This move was way more exhausting than that one, with significantly less effort required.  Booo.  Next surgery end of April so having a hard time getting motivated for fitness now that it'll have to end in a month, but after that...  Game on :)

Anyways - have spent the last few days unpacking, organizing, and problem solving.  Which, except for the first step, is pretty much just like going to work ;)

I feel like I actually moved into Ikea though.  Have been spending entirely too much time there and at Walmart.  Here's hoping the next house we're in a financial position not to need to visit either ;)

The kitchen is a fraction the size of our last one -- you know, proportionate to the size of the house ;).  This has made for some interesting unpacking challenges, but fortunately we do have a number of cabinets and I managed to find home for everything.  Well, everything except the food!  I suggested to Chris that we needed somewhere to put groceries before we bought them and through his kijiji powers, we had an armoire by dinner time.  And thanks to Walmart combined with my extensive assembling-cheap-furniture skills, we had shelves and a workable pantry the next day.  That made a huge difference to the usability of the house.

We also bought an oven.  Why?  Well because the house didn't come with one.  So random.  It's here now and actually got used today.  How civilized!   We've also ordered new counter tops because Chris is already missing his granite.  He really did lose a stunning kitchen in the move.   Exciting though -- I get an instant hot water faucet with the new counters.  Woohoo!   Okay, apologies to those who've been reading the blog since it's inception as the definition of "exciting" may have deteriorated somewhat.  Or at very least changes from day to day ;).   Still saving for our trip to Africa -- that'll redefine the word again for the better :)

Let's see, what else...  I discovered today that our official translation of our marriage license (complete with stamps!) is insufficient; I have to get an Ontario translator to translate it.  Can you hear my eyes roll?  Even *my* Spanish (we're talking approximately a month of Duolingo here) is almost sufficient to read it.  Sheesh.  So that was a good waste of a morning.  I will remain with the ambiguousness of two last names for a while yet it seems.  Will likely try again in that 'allowed off the couch but not at work' recovery period after surgery.

Said surgery has a 60% chance of success -- with success being loosely defined as me not needing any more surgery *sigh*.  No commitment or even suggestion as to what, if any, vision I might have at the end of this.  But fingers crossed.  If the other 40% comes to play, it'll mean at least one more cycle of surgery :(

So I'm more awake now than I was when I started typing, but at least the hamster has chilled out a bit.  I feel like switching to some mindlessness on my Kobo for a bit might do the trick.   Tomorrow is all about sitting on hold w various agencies - gas, hydro, town, etc.   Not really how childhood me envisioned adult me spending vacation time but such is reality right?   Hey maybe when I can't sleep tomorrow night I'll actually write a flash :). Ummm don't hold your breath on that one ;-P 

Okay off now.  For real this time.   Sweet dreams.

*edited to add: so the ap selected the wrong photo from my phone, but it worked equally well.  Uploading was a PITA though so methinks I'll go back to the old fashioned way of typing at least for a while...*

Ding, dong, the house is gone...

It's been what one might consider an interesting week...

Let's see.  Friday night we made arrangements to go see seven houses on Saturday morning.  By Saturday morning only four were left.  Of the four, we quite liked two.  One had only just come on the market, and we were pretty sure it'd have a bidding war putting it out of our price range (it did -- ended I think about $50K above asking), the other (which we actually liked better) we decided to put an offer in.

So we met our agent Saturday afternoon to sign off on that, then drove out to meet Kerri and Steve for dinner for Kerri's bday.  Yeah :)   Super good to see them cause, well, that doesn't happen nearly often enough!

Sunday daytime I've already pretty much forgotten, so I feel like we didn't do a ton ;)   We did, however, go for an absolutely lovely dinner with Chris' family for his birthday.  So. Much. Yummy. Food.   Ugh.   Came home in a food coma and did nothing till sleep time.  Sometimes those are actually the best days.

I stayed in Paris on Sunday night because Monday was my brother-in-law's wedding.  Yup, Ted and Hillary got married on leap day :)  Was a really nice ceremony; Hillary was gorgeous and the kids were so excited.  This was followed by - yup - more food.  hahaha  Just seemed to be the weekend for it.   Now all the guys were impressed with the idea that Ted would only have to celebrate an anniversary every four years (why is it a have to for men but a want to for women?   That's a divide I've yet to understand).   But really, you know it's going to be a mini-anniversary on the normal years and a big anniversary on the leap years.   Which  means every four years, he has a big anniversary.  Every four.  Most couples celebrate a big anniversary every five after the first one.  One, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, etc...  But no, now Ted's going to have every four AND likely all the big ones.  And that's when we found out leap day was Hillary's suggestion.  Well played ;)    hahaha and know that I am just teasing -- I actually think that's a very cool date to get married on; I love it when people pick days that have a significance beyond "random Saturday".

Now in the middle of all this, shortly after the deadline (which occurred during the ceremony), we received word the sale of our house had been finalized!   Woohoo!  Not to take away from the wedding, but that news was also pretty exciting - at least for us :)  

Because I figured that might run late, I made arrangements to work from home on Tues as well and stayed in Paris on Monday night.   This ended up being a good thing as the only time we could make work to go see the mortgage person was Tuesday late afternoon.  Getting approval was no problem; deciding the most efficient way of handling our finances, best balance of money to put toward the down payment and not being extraordinarily broke after, and horrifyingly adult decisions about such fun things as insurance -- all of that was what took the time.

So much time that by the time we left, there was a rather impressive blizzard going on.  As such, I decided to stay Tues night as well and work from home on Wed.  Just as well because on Wed our house offer was accepted!   Woohoo!   So after Chris got home from work we signed the small mountain of paper work and it's done.  We now own (or are about to own) a house in Burlington.  Woohoo!  Sadly it's still going to be an hour and a half commute one way *sigh* and the house has a tiny yard (sorry Sash!) -- but other than that I'm super stoked about it.  Will be nice to settle a little, and, well, actually living with my husband is something I've been looking forward to for a while :)

After signing paperwork, I raced home to change into barn gear and then off to teach, where Kennedy and Callie were just so much fun to teach jumping.  Both totally on the ball tonight.  Awesome.  Cold night though.  Brrrrr.   And man do I ever miss riding :(

Now the challenge for tomorrow is to figure out how to write a cheque on a chequing account for which I never actually got any cheques ;)   Seriously, who writes cheques anymore?   But I need to, so that's tomorrow's challenge before meeting up with our Burlington agent to provide said cheque as a deposit for the new house.  Fortunately there is, in fact, a branch in my office building and I feel like they'll be able to resolve that for me at lunch time tomorrow.

Friday I once again relocate back to Paris (3 or 4 weekends left and then no more!!!) so that Saturday we can go back to Burlington to do the house inspection.  Assuming it passes, we'll be good to go.  Close on the new house Easter weekend, and have to be out of ours end of March.

SO excited!